"People were screaming for just a place to hang out and change their scenery and talk about their stories with other people, just kind of vent it through," said co-owner Wendy Ball.

Boulder emerged from days of flooding, returning to some normalcy on Monday, as the University of Colorado resumed classes, downtown businesses kept regular hours and city libraries and recreation centers reopened.

The Cup had shortened hours over the weekend, because many staff members couldn't get to work due to flooding. Even Monday, Ball said she was still having a tough time staffing the busy espresso bar.

Many Boulder residents flocked to the downtown coffee shop for a warm beverage and to feel a sense of community, Ball said.

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"They don't want to focus on (the flooding) 24/7," Ball said. "To bounce their stories off other people and realize your situation isn't as bad as the next person's situation, it's sort of cathartic to do that."

At the Boulder Public Library's main branch, patrons browsed the shelves for books or worked on computers. The library -- sitting on the banks of Boulder Creek, which was rushing at dangerously high levels during the height of the flood -- closed Thursday, Friday and Sunday due to the disaster.

"In Boulder (the library is) very important because it's a central place where people not only get information and use computers, but it really is a center -- a focal point of people's lives in a lot of ways," Parker said. "Especially our regular clientele. Rather than going to the mall or the movies, they come here."

Parker said the library is waiving all late fees and won't charge patrons for damage to books because of flooding. One woman, a Lyons resident, called to say that she'd been evacuated from her home and she didn't grab her four library books on the way out.

"I said, 'Don't worry about it. You have more important things to worry about than library books,' " Parker said.

Despite some gripes and a petition asking the chancellor to keep campus shut Monday, some stir-crazy CU students said they were happy to return to a normal schedule.

While schools in the Boulder Valley School District remain closed through Tuesday, CU opened back up Monday -- though many students said attendance was lower than usual in their classes.

"I had such bad cabin fever," said Megan Close, a freshman.

Campus shut down Thursday and Friday, and the university canceled Saturday's football game against Fresno State.

Chancellor Phil DiStefano made the decision to reopen the school, although school officials said they didn't want any students taking "dangerous risks" to get to campus.

Close said about a quarter of her classmates didn't show up for her Women in Ancient Greece or writing courses on Monday. Having grown up in Iowa, the flooding, she said, was reminiscent of a 2008 massive flood in her home state. Close said she spent her time off from school catching up on classwork.

"The time off isn't so fun when you have nothing to do," she said.

Karina Blackwell, a CU junior from Australia who lives in Williams Village, said cooped-up students played card games and watched movies. She said resident advisers warned students not to drink heavily, because roads to the hospital were closed.

"It was a bit boring," Blackwell said..

Across town, parents and their grade-school aged kids, who were out shopping because schools were closed, looked at kites and other knick-knacks inside Into the Wind on Pearl Street.

Business on Saturday was "terrible," Kusler said. Business Sunday was even worse, he added.

But on Monday, Kusler saw a steady stream of customers, though not as many as he would have liked. He worried about losing business from tourists on their way to Rocky Mountain National Park in now-devastated and in accessible Estes Park.

"I do expect business to suffer from this," Kusler said. "I don't know how huge or large-scale, but it will suffer. Some people around the country have in the back of their minds that Colorado is not a place to go right now."

Kusler said he was still wrestling with how to handle employees who couldn't come to work because of flooding. He said he was debating between having employees use vacation or sick days, or just "biting the bullet" and paying them.

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